


Taking Root

by gnomeslice



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-14
Updated: 2014-12-14
Packaged: 2018-03-01 09:24:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2768021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gnomeslice/pseuds/gnomeslice
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU 2x04. Following their fight at the dropship, Clarke and Anya are forced to take a detour on their way to the fallen Ark.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Taking Root

You won the fight but hardly take any pride in the victory. Your stay at Mount Weather was spent eating full meals and resting in a comfortable bed. Anya was starved, stuffed into a cage, and strung up to bleed. While it’s a miracle that she’s been able to cover this much ground so quickly, she’s at the end of her rope.

The woman is exhausted, stumbling along behind you with none of the careful grace she had been chastising you for not being able to emulate earlier that day. You don’t know what’s going to happen to her when you find the rest of your people. Will they take her prisoner? Kill her on sight? You’re not even sure how many of your people are left. No matter what, you’ll do what you can to convince them that she’s an asset—it’ll be impossible to take down Mount Weather without help from the Grounders.

The cloth binding in your hands tugs tight.

You turn, ready for an attack, or a threat, or maybe even to find Anya collapsed on the trail. It’s none of that. Anya has stopped, stone still, eyes sweeping the trees above you.

“Anya, what—”

“Quiet,” she hushes you sharply, her hands closing tightly around her restraints.

You match her grip, worried that she’ll try to pull the binding from your hands and make a break for it. She whispers in her own language and looks back to the trees. The sun has already set, so when you look into the dark forest canopy there isn’t much you see but shadows.

But you can _hear_ them. Their wings skimming leaves and crashing against small branches. There’s an urgency to their flapping, and oddity to the number of birds traveling so late at night.

Now you understand, “The fog… we’re too far from the drop ship!”

Anya isn’t listening to you, she’s looking around the woods, tugging against the binding in your hands, “We have to move. Now.”

It’s without hesitation that you follow her. In the back of your mind you realize that you’re running deeper into a foreign part of the forest. Hopefully you’ll be able to keep your bearings and find your way back towards the balloon you saw. Of course, you’ll have to survive the acid fog first.

The Grounder ahead of you has nothing but survival on her mind. She’s using every bit of her remaining strength to barrel through the woods as fast as she can. You match her pace and, with everything you have left, you run. Your sides are cramping, head pounding with wounds from rocks and fists, your lungs can’t seem to get enough air.

You’re scared.

“Over there,” Anya pants heavily. “That tree—with the vines.”

A goal, she’s given you a goal and it takes root in your heart. Get to the tree, you have to get there. Anya is three steps ahead, scrambling over a fallen tree and pulling you along with her. She collapses on the other side in a heap of thin limbs and wild hair. She’s almost gone.

“Come on,” you take her arm, tugging the woman to her feet with a strength you don’t rightfully possess. “Almost there.”

The tree is large, with vines twisted into the bark, knotted in ways that aren’t natural. It’s a marking, you figure, to identify this tree as a shelter. Anya finds her wits, pushing her hands into the shadows and groping for something behind the vines.

The birds scream above you, calling out a warning that chills your bones.

You’re frantic, “What are we looking for?”

Anya shouts, “Hold on!”

In a horrible moment of déjà vu the ground under your feet opens and swallows you whole. Out of surprise or fear, your arms manage to wrap themselves around Anya’s slim waist as you fall. You might have even screamed. The landing is abrupt, soft, and so dark.

“What was that?”

What just happened? A trapdoor rigged to reseal above you? You’re not sure, you can’t see anything, there’s no light or flame. The air smells of earth and dirt, but it’s fresh and safe. A chamber under the tree? With the hand that’s not pinned under Anya’s back, you feel the material that caught you. It’s a net, thin braded strands of a sturdy cord.

“Where are we?”

Anya groans, “Are you ever quiet?”

Her breathing is still heavy from the run. You imagine that her body is still tired from the fight, the escape, from the torture. But there’s something calm about her posture, the way her muscles are loose against your arm. Wherever she’s brought you, she feels safe here.

“Rest for a moment,” her voice floats through the darkness in a tone that’s not quite asking but not at all an order.

You shouldn’t feel safe laying on this net next to a woman that’s tried to kill you multiple times. You shouldn’t relax here, in a pitch black chamber under a tree. You know all these things, yet your eyes still get heavy and soon you can’t tell if they’re open or if they’re closed.

For what it’s worth, Anya’s hands are still tied.

That won’t keep her from strangling you.

Or stealing your knife to stab you.

Your arm will be numb by morning.

You sleep, praying the Grounder will do the same.

\---

Since coming to the Ground, maybe even sometime during your time in prison, you’ve become a light sleeper. Despite your exhaustion, you're startled awake a few times by Anya shifting in her sleep. The net sags under your weight, drawing you both together in the middle. Her hip presses into yours, elbow poking your ribs a little. It's a closeness that you’re not used to, feeling someone else breathing, their body heat, and their fidgeting.

You're curious about the Grounders.

Are they close to one another? This world is so organic, free, and rich. It’s a stark contrast to the sterile setting of the Ark, whose walls were sharp and soulless. The community forged in orbit was out of necessity. People were close only because there was nowhere else to go, no room to breathe or place to escape to. The Ground is so much different. You think of Lincoln, living on his own.

How many other tribes of Grounders are out there?

How many loners?

Something strikes you and it seems important enough to bring up now.

Quietly, you whisper, "Anya?"

She doesn't answer, you call her name once more.

“Tris," Anya grumbles, pressing her elbow further into your side, "you have your own bed.”

The name stills you.

Anya’s former Second, the young girl who died after the attack on the bridge. She had done everything she could to keep Tris alive, including kidnapping you for your meager medical knowledge. It wasn’t enough. Anya had been ruthless in her grief.

Tris is still close to her heart and you feel a thread of sorrow fill yours.

Even so, you ask, "Do Grounders have sisters and brothers?"

Anya makes a noise, somewhere between confusion and affection, "What are you—ugh. Yes, we’ll visit your sister tomorrow."

Grounders have siblings.

“Please,” she turns away from you and onto her side, “let me sleep.”

The momentum dips the net even further, tipping you onto your side with her. You wish you could scoot back, so your knees didn’t touch her thighs and your chest didn’t press against her back, but your arm is still trapped under her weight. Anya’s breathing deepens again, slipping back into the darkness.

It takes you much longer to fall back asleep.

\---

There’s a hand pushing your shoulder, urging you to move.

“Quick, roll, roll!”

You do, tucking your head between your arms and pitching sideways hastily—so hastily, in fact, you don’t notice the end of the net and topple heavily to the ground.

“Oof,” the wind is knocked from your chest.

Thankfully you were able to protect your head, though, your vision swims with rushing blood and excess adrenalin. As you clamber clumsily to your feet you’re disarmed by a strange noise.

It’s thin and airy, nearly frail, but yes, Anya is laughing.

“What’s the emergency?” you huff, looking around for a danger of some sort, any sort. There’s nothing. All you see is Anya and her crooked smile.

She answers you easily, “I wanted to see you fall.”

Anya settles onto a crate in the corner of the chamber. It’s a larger room than you thought it would be. The walls are covered in tree roots and support beams, piles of supplies and weapons line the edges. Sheets of Plexiglas are fastened to the celling, allowing slivers of daylight to filter into the cavity below the tree.

“Here,” Anya waves you towards her, “come eat.”

You hesitate, feeling for the knife that was in your waistband—it’s gone and so are the ties that once bound Anya’s hands.

“Where are we?”

“Safe.”

“That doesn’t tell me a whole—”

Anya cuts you off by tossing a thin disk across the chamber. You’re barely able to catch it.

“Eat,” she instructs simply.

“What is this?” you turn the disk over in your hands.

It’s about the size of your hand, and only as thick as your thumb. It’s pliable but tears when at the edges when you fold it. You realize it’s bread. Flat and thin, made of a dark grain and flour.

“So many questions,” Anya murmurs, watching you carefully. She rips off a piece of her own flatbread and eats it. “I haven’t poisoned it, if that’s what you mean.”

“No, I just…”

You weren’t worried about poison, honestly, you wanted to know what it’s called.

Deciding that the name isn’t really important, and to keep from fumbling through any more conversation with this Grounder, you tear off a piece of bread and put it in your mouth. It doesn’t taste bad at all, much better than the hard, brick-like, bread you’ve had for rations on the Ark.

If Anya’s feeding you, then there’s a chance she’s less committed to killing you. Right? You’d like to think so, but you eye that door on the far side of the hollow and wonder where it leads. You spend a few minutes looking around the chamber and keeping from asking all the questions on your mind.

You’ll let Anya break the silence.

Whenever she’s ready.

Maybe after she finishes her bread.

You’re already planning your hike back to your people. You saw the beacon, if you can find the river you'll come across a familiar path to the valley. It'll be your way home. Oddly, you're worried about Anya's next move so your silence doesn’t actually last very long at all.

"What now?"

Anya blinks away from where she’d been staring at the wall. She might not like your questions, and that’s fine—you’re going to ask them anyway.

"You said you couldn't go back to the Grounders without a prize."

Anya’s eyes fall back to the wall and she tears off another piece of bread. She doesn’t answer you.

Softly, you press, "What will they do to you when you return?"

"The Commander was once my Second," Anya tells you in a whisper that is almost lost in the roots of the walls. “She will be fair with me.”

"Would she hurt you?"

Her eyes jump from the wall to meet yours. She speaks very clearly, “I would rather die by the hands of my own people than rot away as an animal in a cage.”

You understand completely. While you don’t understand the Grounder justice she might face when she returns to her people, you’re not going to pretend that Mount Weather offered her any better options.

“I meant it when I said that we didn’t have to be enemies,” you’re not sure that this is the best time to try for an olive branch, but you go ahead, “we can take down the Mountain Men. If the Grounders and the Sky People work together they won’t stand a chance.”

Anya studies you again and you wonder what she sees. You’re still covered in cracked mud and dried blood. You feel the bruises on your face and the cut throbbing near your ribs. You’re not a warrior like she and her people are, you’re just trying to survive.

But maybe, it’d be a little easier to survive with her by your side.

Anya stands, crossing the room with steady feet. One night’s rest did her well, the color has come back to her face and you think her eyes are sharper than they’ve been since you found her in that cage. She’s wildly impressive. You understand how she’s come to lead the Grounders into battle.

“I can’t promise you an allegiance,” Anya is truthful, “but I can get you and audience with Commander Lexa. She will want to know what the Mountain Men are doing to our people.”

You hold out your hand, and this time she takes it.


End file.
